The Broken Cyborg
The Broken Cyborg, A Biopunk Fairytale is a 2019 album written and produced by Paul Shapera. It is a sequel to The Forgotten Meme, A Cyberpunk Fairytale. The album was released on March 10, 2019. However, it was first live-streamed on Paul Shapera's YouTube Channel on March 7, at 9 PM. The album features Liel Bar-Z, Paul Shapera, Psyche Corporation, Lauren Osborn, Vivian Moonic and a pre-recorded line by Kerttu Aarnipuu and back-vocals by Chance Martin. Adrienne “AeB” Byrne played the flute on Track 7 and the cover art was created by Shibara, who created the covers for all three albums of the trilogy. Plot The story opens in a shanty town in the center of a large park in the city of New Albion. it had started with a small group of back to nature enthusiasts, but it was eventually joined by runaways and disenfranchised young punks, until eventually it evolved into a various mix of neo futurist hippies, crunchy cyberpunks and transfuturist modification junkies. In this park lives and works a young genius named Xander, who is obsessed with pioneering biopunk technology. They had been raised in a cult. Their mother and her sister had grown up in the Shopogopolis and were recruited into joining this space age cult who believe in chasity, in preparation for cosmic angels who will come and carry the pure to a blissful life in outer space. Since the cult must procreate despite their distaste for sex, procreation is with hoods. Their aunt gave birth to their cousin Henry, and their mother gives birth to them and their twin, Macayla. Macayla develops a serious illness which the cult refuses to treat, so Xander’s mother flees with the twins one night. She returns to the Shopogopolis and Xander's sister gets medical treatment, but it is too late. She ends up locked into her body and from there slowly goes insane. Xander’s obsession with biopunk science stems from this. Xander went on to study biology at a university in New Albion, but their experiments went too far and they were expelled. They set up shop in the shanty town where he now lives. One day, a woman called Rebecca and her wife, a small, rodent-like robot called The Little Meme visited Xander and asked them to create them a child. Xander made the child out of The Little Meme's bioessence and Rebecca's DNA. The little cyborg was was initially given male attributes, but several weeks after gaining consciousness informed her mothers that she is in fact a girl, so Xander made the necessary adjustments. The cyborg is thus named Jane. The Little Meme, Rebecca and Jane stayed in the shanty town and Jane became very close with Xander, learning biology and studying their experiments. One day, when Xander was not there, Jane admitted a young man who wanted a simple bio-enhancement. Jane did the job and he paid her with a pouch of sand. When Xander found out, he insisted she threw the sand away, but Jane kept it. Jane grew up in the shanty town, andw as not only very attached to it, but suffered anxiety at the thought of the outside city and the idea of leaving the park. Meanwhile, the Mayor of New Albion is up late at night , bothered by a strange correspondence she has received from dwarves who live far below the city. The Mayor is already quite burdened with the taks of holding the city together and playing fierce games of politics, despite a crumbling marriage and a child with behavioral and emotional issues. These dwarves very rarely messages up to the surface and indeed, the last time they had was back when Annabel McAlistair was alive. They warn that a wheel that controls the cycle of epochs has turned and that major upheaval is on the way. Parallels are drawn between Annabel and Edgar, Merlin and Arthur, and presumably, Xander and Jane. The Mayor, unwilling to have another disaster like the dolls occur on her watch, orders the city military to go and take the shanty town. ]] Meanwhile, Jane decides to secretly perform another operation on a patient while Xander is out. She messes up repeatedly and a college girl looking for a sexy tail ends up with six tails protruding out various parts of her body and incredibly long hair covering her so that she looks like a shambling mound. Xander walks in, sighs and works late into the night to fix the problem. Despite this, they tell Jane: "I love and I'm proud of you and nothing you could ever do will change my mind." At that moment Xander stops, listens and says that something "is out there". Blood Red Dogs burst into Shanty Town and an all-out war begins. Rebecca gets shot among many others and The Little Meme runs to her. She begs Xander to take her child to safety and she stays with Rebecca, lying on the ground. Xander takes Jane away but a soldier sees Jane and her robotic features, identifies her as a threat and shoots her. She falls down, the bullet having destroyed her arm. Xander picks Jane up and carries her away. Dozens of refugees, now without a home, descend into the Tunnels Beneath New Albion and travel. They run into Lloyd Allen, who tells them about the ways forward in the tunnels. He says there are Dwarves and The Wheel there, and that they should avoid that. He says that if they go in one direction they would find the stone gates where the Faerie Realm begins and that they will all have to ingest some of the sand Jane is carrying in her pouch to be able to cross the gates. The refugees listen to Lloyd and head for the gates with the soldiers still chasing them. They find the Albino Tribes and Lillith, their queen, tells the refugees a story of their magic, its becoming and their task. They offer the refugees rest but then ask them to leave. With no where to go, the refugees continue their journey through the tunnels. Jane had long passed out and Xander carried her, refusing all help in that task. Xander keeps apologizing to Jane for not being able to save her. The refugees find the ancient city of Victoria, the city of the faeries. The faeries offer them a place to stay and heal, but their magic, beyond human comprehension, starts taking its toll on the refugees' minds. Xander, taken by the abilities that faeries posses, starts learning their skills and their magic. They slowly go mad, but also succeed in learning the ways they could fix Jane. ]] Despite now knowing the incredible techniques that faeries have, Xander needs human flesh to fix Jane. They cut off their both legs and their left arm, laughing maniacally, trying to save Jane. Xander succeeds, but the knowledge takes a heavy toll on their mind. Now crazy, Xander manages to write down all they had learned in chapters and add a warning never to study beyond the chapter seven. All of the refugees fear for their minds. The presence so near to the faerie magic is starting to disturb them. Jane, who had recovered, learns from Xander's notebook and modifies all the refugees to their liking. Together, they decide to return to Shanty Town. Once they reach Shanty Town, Jane leading the way home, they are confronted by the Blood Red Dogs, who surround them and make Jane kneel. She sings of home and smiles, then an army of albinos and an army of faeries flood the field of battle and defeat the Blood Red Dogs. In a callback to The Little Meme's "You will not have her", Jane sings to the Blood Red Dogs: "You cannot have it, you cannot take our home." The refugees, now home, declare independence and found a new town in the center of the park in New Albion. They now call it Xandoria and are lead by the warrior cyborg princes Jane. Cast and Characters Psyche Chimere as Han-Mi Paul Shapera as Xander, Basheq Latef and Lloyd Allen Liel Bar-Z as Jane Vivian Moonic as The Mayor Lauren Osborn as Lillith Cover art by Shibara Soundtrack Continuity The Broken Cyborg chronologically follows The Forgotten Meme. It is set in a logical, continual time-frame. It loosely mentions the period before The Ballad of Lost Hollow and the early lives of Xander and Henry's mothers. Trivia * In early promotions of the album, Paul Shapera stated it would be heavy on lore. This was very much the case as the album featured a variety of call-backs, references, easter eggs, characters and motives from previous albums. The major ones being Lloyd Allen's appearance, the reveal of Henry's true background, the Albino Tribes, the faeries and of course, New Albion as the main setting. Among numerous others are the Blood Red Dogs, Rebecca and The Little Meme, Shopogopolis, mentions of the Dolls, the Voodoopunk, Annabel and Edgar, etc. * Han-Mi narrates this story, just as she narrated The Forgotten Meme. She does not interfere in the events, but just as Raven had in The Forgotten Meme, Lloyd Allen makes an appearance and steers the cast a little. * Paul Shapera had planned the plot, or at least some parts of the plot of The Broken Cyborg before recording The Forgotten Meme. He recorded Kerttu Aarnipuu's line from this album while recording The Forgotten Meme. * The Broken Cyborg was first live-streamed on YouTube on March 7, 2019. * The release date of the album was supposed to be March 10. However, in an attempt to set up a pre-order on it, Paul Shapera released the album to the public on March 8, giving the fans another treat, after the live-stream. * The song titles are written in Chinese to prevent the entire plot from being gathered from song titles alone on the first listen. Mandarin was chosen after Psyche was consulted and said that was the language that Han speaks